Wondering if anyone knows how much it costs to oil one lane with a 40 foot long house pattern using Kegel Fire and/or Ice conditioner.  Have bowled 3 different centers so far starting this winter and all 3 featured short/lightly oiled patterns.  I was told that the centers are just trying to save a little money.

Got a Ride, still too much ball.  Looking at Tropicals now.

That's the case here in the house I bowl. They buy a walker and barely use much oil. Bowlers complained about the length a couple years back too, so it's about 37' with low volume. It's hell in the second shift leagues. My "weakest" cover is pushing me away from the pocket.

My bag has a 5k with UFO polish medium ball, a polished entry level ball, and soon a urethane blue hammer.

"Saving money" does jackitty squat if dry lanes cause so many bowlers to quit bowling and leave the center in worse financial status than before due to lack of income.

That's the problem with today's economy: businesses needlessly cut corners and/or raise prices in an attempt to increase their profits sky high, and when the consumer responds (rightfully so) by cutting back on their own spending simply because the product is too expensive or undesirable, businesses wrongfully blame the consumer, cut even more corners, and raise prices even higher.

Higher costs/less spending aren't always avoidable, but I feel that 99.99% of businesses take advantage of the helpless consumers, and do the exact opposite of what they should when their overpriced (and sometimes poor in general) goods don't turn a profit.

OK, so anyone know the cost of 1 gallon of Kegel Fire/Ice conditioner?

According to a 2014 jayhawk price list

A 5 Gallon jug of Kegel Ice or Fire Lane conditioner is $245.00

okay If I figured it right.

5 gallons is 18927 milliliters.
say 30 milliliters per lane.

That would be about 631 lanes worth, for a 32 lane house that would be about a 20 day supply, if they just oiled once a day with that amount of oil each day.

$245 / 631 lanes would be about .40 cents per lane. for just the oil.

that wouldn't factor in the other overhead like labor, power usage, waste, clean up etc.

So, with a labor, power, etc, let's call it maybe 80 cents a lane?  Perhaps I will take up a collection at our next league session, say 50 cents per bowler to get some more length and volume 

I tried that at our house.  I few years ago I told the manager that I would buy the oil for our league if they would put out more volume.  He didn't like someone else telling him how to oil his lanes.

The difference in cost between high volume and low volume is minimal, but it costs way more than $1 lane to run lanes.

Oil
Cleaner
Cloth
Machine maintenance
Batteries @ about $600/year
The machine itself. New Flexes are $35k. Cheap machines these days are $25k.
Labor

On top of all that the great majority of league bowlers would rather have the lanes on the drier side. The vocal minority is the group that wants more oil on the lane.